Monthly Archives: September 2014

And since I KNOW THE WAY YOU PEOPLE THINK, I want to emphasize that I specifically mean that the median use of Spiders Georg is worse than the median use of doge, and so there is no way outliers could have affected this result.

“median use of Spiders Georg is worse than the median use of doge” factoid actualy just statistical error. median use of Spiders Georg is excellent. Georg Georg, a chatbot that adds the word “Georg” to posts and reposts them randomly 10,000 times each day, is an edge case adn should not have been counted

Miri has a great post up about a common therapy failure mode, which is really a common interact-with-humans failure mode, which is really a common do-things-at-all failure mode – not determining your actions with goals:Continue reading Should You Get Therapy?→

David: Luke has approved our MIRIx app
Me: Yay!
David: and we are getting posted on the MIRIx page
Me: Nice!
Me: This is possibly more important than being posted on the Map.
Me: Though now at least one DC-based Rationalist Blog is on the Map, sort of.
David: it is?
Me: Compass Rose
Me: I changed my blog’s title
David: ah, right
Me: You know what one does when the map doesn’t match the territory, right?
Me: (One changes the territory.)
David: is that a running thing?
Me: Apparently it’s not even an Eliezer Yudkowsky Fact.
Me: Huh.
David: well, you know what one does when the map about what one does when the map doesn’t match the territory doesn’t match the territory
Me: I’m afraid your map about what I know about what one does when the map about what one does when the map doesn’t match the territory doesn’t match the territory doesn’t match the territory.

This (via Miri) is a piece by Margo, a social worker, talking about how people talk about social work as being unusually hard, and call social workers “saints.” Margo doesn’t much care for the assumption that social work is unusually hard, and I’m glad I read this, because it will temper the advice I read in this post, suggesting that the universally appreciated response to finding out someone’s profession is to say that their job must be hard:Continue reading Is It Unfair that Social Workers are Underpaid?→

That thing where a friend wants to talk about their shameful secret
And you listen, ready to be nonjudgmental
When they get past all the perfectly normal parts, to the bit you’ll have to be nonjudgmental about
And then they stop
Because they’re done
And you have no idea what you were supposed to be nonjudgmental about
But you guess if you can’t tell
That means you did it anyway.

For those of you who were able to come celebrate my birthday with me, thank you. And for those of you who couldn’t make it, you were missed, but not loved the less for it.

On the topic of presents – while none will be turned away, I’m fortunate to mostly have enough things in my life. If you’d like to do something for me to celebrate my birthday, I’m going to ask you to take an action instead. I’m going to ask you to take an action to help others.Continue reading Birthday Wish→